


First Aid

by cenotaphy



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, But also possibly non-platonic, Caring Sam, Castiel Needs a Hug, Castiel feeling guilty, Dean being emotionally mature, Destiel if you squint - Freeform, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, First Aid, Gen, Hospitals, Human Castiel, Hurt Dean, Hurt/Comfort, I Don't Even Know, M/M, Mostly Gen, One Shot, Platonic Relationships, Sam Needs a Medal, Sastiel if you squint a little more, Teaching moments, Team Free Will, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-18
Updated: 2017-01-18
Packaged: 2018-09-18 09:41:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9378932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cenotaphy/pseuds/cenotaphy
Summary: Dean gets hurt on a hunt, and newly-human Castiel can't heal him. One-shot. Set at some point in one of the later seasons.





	

Castiel can't fly anymore, but for a moment he almost forgets that, his surroundings blurring around him with the speed of his movement. It's a second, maybe two seconds, before he's on the vampire—a second, maybe two seconds, before his blade is separating its head from its body. Too slow. Too slow.

A jolt of fury runs through him—he hasn't been human long, and he hates it, hates the suffocating cage of his own limitations, hates the clumsiness, the pain, the cold, the _slowness_.

He hurls the headless corpse to the side and falls to his knees beside Dean, who is gagging on a mouthful of his own dark blood, his hands curled in the torn fabric of his shirt, framing the grievous chest wound inflicted roughly three seconds ago.

"Dean!"

Dean turns his head and coughs. It trickles, red, down the side of his face. "Let the fucker...get the jump on me. Getting slow in my old age."

"Don't try to talk, just hold on." Cas covers Dean's bloody hands with one of his own, presses the other to the side of Dean's face, wills the pulse of his grace to flow outwards.

But, of course, there's nothing. There's no grace to push.

Dean judders on the asphalt, more blood spilling over his lower lip.

No.

"No," says Castiel. "No, you have to heal, please let me heal him, please just give me, give me...please. _Please_."

"Can't fix this, Cas," Dean wheezes, lifting one hand weakly to twist it in the fabric of Castiel's coat. "Gotta...stand by like the rest of us suckers."

Time unravels before and behind Castiel, so that for a moment he sees the future, sees Dean die in a wet, scarlet gush of blood, and simultaneously the past, watches himself moving a second faster, beheading the vampire before it can bring its weapon down.

"Cas..." Dean rasps again. "I gotta—"

"No, Dean," Castiel snarls, "no, not like this, _heal_ , dammit, I can _heal_ you—I can't—"

He _can't_ heal Dean. Beneath his hand there's no sensation of manifested power, only the warmth of Dean's face, all scratchy stubble and grime and sweat-streaked skin.

"Dean," he says desperately. "Dean, what do I do, what do I _do_ —"

Dean doesn't respond. His gaze has become distant, his breathing shallow. Castiel gulps for air, his eyes burning, fear settling like a lead brick in his gut. He's graceless, pointless, useless. He can't heal Dean. _He can't heal Dean_.

Dean turns his head a little more, nestling his face against Castiel's palm. His eyelids slide shut.

"Dean, Cas!"

It's Sam, left arm bloody to the elbow, whirling around the corner of the building—why had they decided to split up? that decision seems so long ago—like a divine wind. He's beside them in a minute, mouth slack with horror for a split second before he releases a torrent of frantic questions. What the questions are, Castiel doesn't know. He can't hear them over the terrified sounds—nonsensical words in a jumble of languages, a high keen of despair—that fill the air and drown out Sam's voice.

He cradles Dean's limp body. What is he supposed to _do_ —

" _Cas!_ " The flat of Sam's hand, colliding with his cheekbone, knocks him sideways, loosens his grip on Dean. The terrified sounds stop. Castiel realizes that he was the one making them.

Sam has his other hand under Dean's head, cushioning it, keeping it from striking the ground. He looks at Castiel with eyes that appear almost black under the weak light of the streetlamp, and his voice is low and furious. "I need you _cognizant_ , do you understand? Or you can get out of the way."

Castiel pulls himself together. He was a soldier, once.

"What do I do?"

Sam is stripping off his jacket, crushing it into a wad. "Take his feet."

***

It's hours before the doctors will let them see Dean. They were lucky that the vampires had set up shop practically across the street from a hospital. Makes sense, Castiel supposes. A reliable supply of fresh blood and a steady influx of people too weak to fight back.

The ER staff whisked Dean away so quickly it seemed like they had wings, too. Sam was next to go, led away over his angry protests to have his left arm attended to.

Castiel, somehow, isn't injured at all— _why wasn't I hurt, why aren't I dead, I should be dead_ , he thinks in a dizzy haze, as he's gently but firmly ushered into a room filled with rows of chairs—so he's left to wait. He sits. He paces. He argues with stone-faced nurses. Sam joins him after a little, forearm sporting a clean white bandage. He's clutching a bundled-up blanket that he seems to have no intention of using.

"They think I'm in shock," he says dully, holding it in his lap.

They sit in silence.

Finally, a bearded doctor with a kind face appears and gives them a stern talking-to. Castiel catches the phrases "extremely fortunate" and "tomorrow or the next day" and " _what_ kind of dog?" and Sam is speaking with the doctor in low, grateful tones and it's all very civil and diplomatic and careful and Castiel can't concentrate, can't focus on anything.

Finally they're allowed to see him.

Dean's asleep, or unconscious—Castiel still isn't sure he grasps the difference. He's curiously frail-looking in the off-white hospital gown, the sheet tucked up under his arms, hiding the wound on his chest and whatever the doctors had to do to save him. The gash on his forehead must have bled more than it was worth, because it's held shut with just a piece of tape, no stitches.

Sam doesn't say anything, just ghosts the back of his hand against Dean's shoulder, his jaw clenched silently. Then he steps away and folds himself, with a sigh, into a chair next to the door.

Castiel stares at Dean. His face looks so peaceful. His breathing is soundless, the rise and fall of his chest barely discernible in the semi-darkness of the room. But he's not dead. No thanks to Castiel, no thanks to Castiel's graceless hands, his panic, his inadequacy—but _he's not dead_.

"Dude." Sam's voice breaks the quiet after what seems like a very long time. "You gonna stand at attention all night?"

Castiel blinks; he hadn't realized how rigid his posture had been. His hands are clenched but he doesn't remember clenching them. Possibly they've been in fists since the ER staff—it took two of them to pull him away, he recalls vaguely—first wrestled Dean from his arms. He uncurls the fingers, winces as the nails come free of the deep indentations they've dug into his palms. He's glad for the pain.

"Sorry for snapping at you earlier," says Sam, and Castiel suddenly knows what Dean means when he refers to Sam's _we-need-to-talk-about-feelings_ voice, "but you froze up, Cas."

"I know." His voice sounds raspy. He hasn't spoken in a while. (Not since the last round of "please, listen, you don't understand, I have to see him, he's my—he's—" and "—no, you can't they're still working on him, _sit down._ ")

"I get why you panicked. But we had to act fast to save Dean, and you weren't helping him freaking out like that—"

"Sam." It comes out harsher than he intends, or maybe he does intend it to come out that harsh. "I am _exactly_ aware of how much danger I've put Dean's life in."

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see that Sam has the grace to look slightly abashed. "I didn't mean it like that."

"Oh? Then what did you mean?" Castiel turns to face the younger Winchester, tilting his head, letting fury trickle into his voice. "Did you mean that I'm a liability? Did you mean that I'm worse than useless in a fight? That I failed to heal Dean, when that was the one thing I could once have been actually counted on to get right? That I failed to have his back, because I was too slow to save him from that vampire? That he nearly died because I didn't know what to do, that he nearly died because I wasn't able to face the fact that I _can't fix him anymore_?"

"Cas—"

"Because all those things are true, Sam, so you _should_ mean them."

"You're a part of the team, Cas," says Sam, and that exasperating, stubborn patience in his voice is bad, but not as bad as the _warmth_ in it, the deep note of care and concern that Castiel can also detect. "That doesn't change just because you get depowered. You work past this stuff, you get better."

"Better," Castiel spits. "What good am I? I can't _heal_ , I can't _fly_ , I can't _fight_ —"

"There are human ways of healing and fighting, Cas. Not easy ways, not shortcuts, but they work—"

"No THEY DON'T, Sam!" Castiel yells, and he half-expects a nurse to bang the door open or Dean to wake up, his voice is so unexpectedly loud, but neither happens, and he continues, "They _don't_ work, Sam, not reliably, not always, and it wouldn't matter if they did, because I _don't know how to do them_! I don't know what to do! I'm _useless_ , and so what happens the next time—the next time he—what happens when—"

He breaks off, head lowered, staring at the tile beneath his shoes. _What happens if he dies. What happens if you die. What happens if I let you both die_. His hands are clenched at his sides again, as if welded there.

Sam doesn't say anything. Castiel can hear the rustle of fabric, something being unwrapped. When he's managed to slow his breathing again, he looks up.

Sam has removed the bandage and is using a pocketknife to cut through the neat row of black stitches running halfway down his forearm.

Castiel doesn't forget, this time, that he has no ability to heal, but that doesn't stop him from taking an instinctive step forward, hands rising in concern. "Sam, what—"

"Turn the light on," says Sam. Blood runs down his arm, leaking in a sluggish trickle from the freshly reopened wound.

Castiel reaches for the switch. The blanket for shock is lying in a heap on the chair next to Sam's, its pale folds falling open around a jumbled heap of shrink-wrapped medical supplies.

"Nicked them," says Sam casually. He picks the last scraps of thread from his skin. "Supply closet. No one was making out in it—don't tell Dean, he thinks _Dr. Sexy_ is real life—"

"I don't understand," says Castiel, and he means the reference, and Sam's calm understanding, and the raw red edges of the wound on Sam's arm, and humanity.

"I'm going to show you how to stitch up a wound." Sam holds a square of gauze against the edge of the gash. "Never too late to learn to be human, right?"

"On—on your own arm?"

"How do you think I learned? On Dean, and on my dad. On myself, too, when I got stupid."

"Sam, I don't—"

"Don't want to?"

"Don't deserve to," Cas corrects, and his voice, he registers, is shaking. So are his hands, for that matter. "I don't deserve _this_. What you're trying to do for me, Sam, you shouldn't have—you shouldn't have to—" He stares down at the limb which Sam has just re-injured, for _him_ , to teach _him_ , to help _him_ —

"Something you said once," Sam says thoughtfully, looking over at Dean. "That you were always happy to bleed for us. Don't you think it goes both ways?"

It's all too overwhelming and Castiel has no answer for it, so he reaches down to pick up a packet of needles. The packet rattles as he lifts it, resists his clumsy efforts to wrench it open.

Sam puts down the gauze and reaches out to wrap careful, bloodied fingers around Castiel's wrist, pressing his thumb over the pulse point. He holds Castiel's hand in place until it no longer shakes.

***

In the early hours of dawn, Sam is out cold, slumped loose-limbed in the chair by the door, but Castiel is sitting by Dean's bed, very much awake. For the hundredth time, he moves his hands through the empty air. His eyes feel scratchy and tired, but he won't let himself doze off, not till his fingers have memorized the small, delicate motions required to slide a needle in and out of flesh.

Sam had talked him through the process, eyes half-lidded, face impassive despite how much it must have hurt. He'd peppered in other first-aid pointers that Castiel now runs through in his mind. Pressure on wounds. Ice for bruising. Feet elevated for shock. Fixing dislocated shoulders, wrapping sprained ankles, sterilizing equipment.

In the end, the stitches were ragged and uneven, staggering down Sam's forearm in huge black slashes. Castiel had hated them. But Sam had nodded and smiled tightly and said _they'll do the job, Cas, it doesn't matter if they're pretty_ , and showed him how to wrap the wound in a fresh bandage.

Dean makes a soft grumbling noise. His eyes flicker open.

"Dean!" Castiel moves before he can stop himself, gripping Dean's hand in both of his own.

"Cas?" Dean half-smiles, his face slack with sleep, his words a little slurred. "What're...where..." His eyes flicker around the room, then to the corner where Sam is. "Hospital...hey, so I made it, huh?"

"The doctors say—" Castiel falters, because he hadn't actually been in any state to listen to what the doctors had been saying. "You should be fine in a couple days," he hazards. "You just need to rest and be careful."

Dean yawns a little and starts to move his free hand. "Hey, careful is my middle name." He stops with a wince and carefully puts the hand back down. "Except when it isn't."

"Dean, I'm so, so—"

"Cas, so help me, if that's an apology about to come out of your mouth I'm gonna get up and punch you, doctor's orders or not."

"But I—"

"Let me guess, you've been sitting here beating yourself up about what happened with the vamps. Well, stop. You did fine."

" _Dean_ , I _failed_ , I couldn't—"

Dean turns his hand over, grips Castiel's fingers gently. "You did _great_ , Cas. And we're fine, and we're alive, and that's what matters. You need to stop buying into the Winchester guilt model, it never pays off. Trust me."

"You're incorrigible," Castiel says in exasperation. "As is your brother."

"Aw, what'd Sammy do now?"

"He's just—stubborn. Pig-headed. _Kind_. You both are."

"Too much heart," Dean says softly, as if to himself. "Always the problem."

"Yes," Castiel agrees, and his voice sounds more like his own and less like the wobbly, shaky thing it's been for the past half dozen hours. The leaden lump in his stomach is gradually disappearing, soothed by Dean's presence, his alert eyes, the lack of blame on his face. "You Winchesters do seem to have that problem."

Dean looks startled for a moment, as if he'd been thinking of something else, but then he only shakes his head and smiles. His hand stays wrappedaround Castiel's. "You too, Cas."

**Author's Note:**

> Desperately trying to escape the grip of writer's block by indulging in angsty hurt/comfort one-shots.
> 
> My original idea, which I've been kicking around for a while now, called for this to be a Dean/Cas piece, but I later changed my mind and started writing with the intention of making it completely platonic. But the story ended up getting away from me, as stories do, and becoming rife with implications, and then a bit of Sam/Cas potential snuck in there somewhere...and none of it ever really made it to take-off, but it's still _there_ , you know? So...open to the reader's interpretation I guess?


End file.
